Foreign direct investments: The BRIC countries and Norway

The present working paper is part of the EU-funded project COST ACTION IS0905, The Emergence of Southern multinationals and their Impact on Europe. Southern multinationals refer to multinationals from emerging economies.

Traditionally foreign direct investment (FDI) has flowed from advanced developed economies into developed and developing countries. More recently, a new trend has emerged in the pattern of FDI. Outward FDI from emerging economies has begun to increase significantly and has been growing at a faster pace than FDI from the advanced developed world in general. The Action seeks to develop and sustain an international research network to study the impact of this new phenomenon for Europe and its stakeholders.

The goal of the network is to implement a research agenda that will be of value to all stakeholders and policy makers in Europe as they grapple with this facet of globalization. Thus, the main objective of this Action is to develop an enhanced capacity for scholarly analysis of the emergence of Southern multinationals to establish and test empirically their impact on Europe and its stakeholders. Does the impact of Southern multinationals differ from that of multinationals in general, and, if so, why? This knowledge is needed in order to assess existing EU-wide and national policies in relation to this phenomenon and to make policy recommendations.

In this context, the main purpose of this paper is to shed some light on to what extent multinationals from some of the major emerging economies, the so called BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India and China), are directly involved with firms in the Norwegian economy. Specific data was commissioned from Statistics Norway in order to provide relevant information.